1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus capable of data recording with a suitable size according to the size of the recording material.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional recording apparatus are constructed to accommodate the recording sheets of various sizes according to the purpose of use, but the data, if printed in identical manner on sheets of different sizes, may appear too short or too long according to the size of the sheet, or become positionally unbalanced on the sheet. The user has therefore had to re-edit the data by suitably changing the number of characters in a line or the number of lines on the sheet according to the size thereof, in order to adequately locate the recording in a sheet. In the following there will be given an explanation on the conventional technology, while making reference to the attached drawings.
Referring to FIG. 1, a page buffer 101 stores character code data of at least one page, supplied for example from a host computer through an input signal line 104. A font memory 102 stores, in a read-only memory (ROM) or a random access memory (RAM), the dot patterns of all the printable characters in the addresses corresponding to the character codes, and releases a character dot pattern in response to a character code read from the page buffer 101. A printing section or unit 103 electrically or mechanically prints, on a recording sheet, the character dot pattern read from the font memory 102.
As an example, in case of a laser beam printer, the dot patterns read from the font memory 102 are converted into serial signals which are used for modulating a laser beam for scanning a photosensitive member, thereby obtaining a black-and-white data print.
FIG. 2 shows an example of data print obtained in such conventional printing apparatus, with a print pitch of 10 cpi (characters/inch) on the sheet of a certain size, for example with a printable width of 8 inches.
In FIG. 3, (a) and (b) respectively show print examples of identical data on sheets with printable widths of 5 and 10 inches.
In case of (a), the printed data are partially lacking as each line is interrupted at the right-hand end because the printable width of the used sheet is narrower than 8 inches. On the other hand, in case of (b), the printed data are too small for the sheet size and unaesthetic since the printable width of the used sheet is too large.